Extracting hierarchical features of cultural variation using network-based clustering

Abstract

High-dimensional data sets on cultural characters contribute to uncovering insights about factors that influence cultural evolution. Because cultural variation in part reflects descent processes with a hierarchical structure—including descent of populations and vertical transmission of cultural traits—methods designed for hierarchically structured data have potential to find applications in the analysis of cultural variation. We adapt a network-based hierarchical clustering method for use in analyzing cultural variation. Given a set of entities, the method constructs a similarity network, hierarchically depicting community structure among them. We illustrate the approach using four data sets: pronunciation variation in the United States mid-Atlantic region, folklore variation in worldwide cultures, phonemic variation across worldwide languages, and temporal variation in first names in the United States. In these examples, the method provides insights into processes that affect cultural variation, uncovering geographic and other influences on observed patterns and cultural characters important in contributing to them.

Signatures of geography, climate and foliage on given names of baby girls

“…Some names are perennially and broadly popular (Newberry & Plotkin, 2022 ), but others show striking boom and bust patterns of popularity (Lieberson & Bell, 1992 ; Berger & Le Mens, 2009 ; Liu et al, 2022 ; Newberry & Plotkin, 2022 ) (Figure S1). Still other names vary geographically in popularity, suggesting that regional cultural patterns can influence name choice (Varnum & Kitayama, 2011 ; Bentley & Ormerod, 2012 ; Barucca et al, 2015 ; Pomorski et al, 2016 ; Liu et al, 2022 ).…”

“…As with all large-scale analyses of baby names (Bentley & Ormerod, 2012 ; Barucca et al, 2015 ; Liu et al, 2022 ; Newberry & Plotkin, 2022 ), our analyses are descriptive. However, most hypotheses we evaluate here were derived a priori and were based on environmental factors that vary geographically and that potentially influence name choice.…”